ºÚÁÏ´«ËÍÃÅ

Mass redundancies and restructuring present a twofold challenge for companies and those affected: on the one hand, redundancy processes must be implemented in a legally compliant, swift and socially responsible manner; on the other hand, the employability of those affected on the labour market is a key factor in determining the acceptance, pace and costs of the entire process. Experienced professionals aged 50 and over, in particular, face specific hurdles when making a career transition. Digital selection procedures and standardised profiles often fail to adequately reflect extensive professional, project and leadership experience, even though this experience is of strategic value to many companies. Scalable outplacement requires solutions that systematically capture experience, present it in a comprehensible way and integrate it into digital placement processes, without incurring a high level of manual effort per person. Artificial intelligence (AI) can help to analyse large volumes of career histories, skills indicators and job requirements in a structured manner, map them transparently and derive precisely tailored next steps.

This is where the project idea comes in: the aim is to develop and evaluate an explanatory AI assistant that acts as a personal companion following redundancy. The companion continuously supports those affected through the reorientation phase, structures the next steps and keeps progress, goals and options visible. It provides support throughout the entire transition: from recording and summarising individual experience, through providing clear justifications for suggestions, to concrete recommendations for action such as profile optimisation, skills development pathways and application strategies. Together with the AI assistant, those affected discover new professional options and career paths, compare them thoroughly and make an informed choice. In this way, outplacement in restructuring scenarios becomes scalable, transparent and measurably effective, both for those affected and for companies.    
The project puts this idea into practice through the following three core functions: 

• Tailored recommendations based on individual skills profiles using modern AI methods
• Explanations provided by explainable AI highlight which competence dimensions underpin a recommendation, how strongly an individual’s own competences reinforce the fit, and where competence gaps exist

• Exploratory opportunities through human-AI co-creation encourage the discovery of alternative career paths based on the ‘what-if’ principle, starting from one’s own skills profile

It is expected that the use of the explanatory AI assistant to support job-seeking among the over-50s will increase their success in finding employment and thus help to address the skills shortage. Specifically, jobseekers aged over 50 benefit from using the explanatory AI assistant by:

• More informed decisions regarding career options and alternative career paths
• An information advantage in one-to-one counselling sessions (awareness of one’s own strengths and gaps, ideas for career options and career paths) and during the application process
• Greater self-efficacy during the application process

• Greater application activity (e.g. more applications)

Project partner: Senior Connect